Enrico Taglietti

August 2026

At the Melbourne Uni School of Design there’s an exhibition on the work of Italian – born architect Enrico Taglietti, and it’s great ! Loads of drawings and photographs. You might know the St Kilda Library, built in the early 1970s, his only work in Victoria. He mainly worked in Canberra, of all places, in the 60s through to the 80s, designing houses, motels, archive buildings, schools, libraries and a church. His style is very individual and unusual in Australia, drawing from the Organic/Frank Lloyd Wright, Brutalist and Modernism, and sometimes a bit space age too!

I’ve picked out the wilder things, some unbuilt, or sketch designs, more exciting than what was built. He had a great splashy technique, and even the scale drawings are lovely. (Memories of feeling the ink flowing on the thick tracing paper…)

There’s stuff going back to his childhood in what’s now Eritrea, an Italian colony in the 30s, and his time at the Milan Polytechnic 1948-52, as well as his family life once they settled in Canberra in 1956.

1. Red Hill lookout sketch

2. Wagga Motel sketch

3. As built

4. Canberra Cinema Centre sketch 5. As built

6. Didn’t say maybe a fantasy !

7. Sketch for one of the 4 libraries he designed

8. Dickson Library dramatic angle

9. Canberra War Memorial store

10. As built, pretty good

11. Hexagonal House design for the Womens Weekly

12. Canberra Motel, metal balustrade by Clement Meadmore, demolished

13. Giralang School